SouthernGospelBlog.com

For a couple months I’ve been thinking through a few ideas about how to take this website to the next level. But before I make any decisions–or even any serious attempts to see if this is practical–I thought I should first check to see what you thought. This website is as much about what you want as it is about what I want.

Here’s what I have in mind: I keep blogging everything in a Wordpress Blog format. But instead of displaying that on the main page, I post a different main page. I use RSS feeds (for those of you who care about the technical end!) and have links to the five most recent CD reviews, five most recent news articles, five most recent “columns” (commentary), et cetera.

As it stands, when you log into this blog site you only see the most recent story. I put a lot of time into some of these, and I hate to see them fall out of sight so fast.

Under this re-design, the website would be more like singingnews.com, sogospelnews.com, or SoGospelLovers. This is not in any way to imply that I’d be competing with those website; this would still be a blog, in that a lot of what I do will be commentary. But it would be like them in one way, namely that you could see links to the most recent stories in several categories whenever you visit the website.

I would plan on providing a link for those of you who still wanted to look at it as a blog. (It would be simple, something along the lines of southerngospelblog.com/blog or southerngospelblog.com/source.)

What do you think?

Would you like a front page re-design where you can see the current 5-10 stories in different categories? Or would you rather keep things just as they are, and only see the current story whenever you log in?

Three Bridges’ song “I Feel a Little Song Coming On” occupies the #1 position on Singing News’s June airplay chart, posted today. In contention for the #1 spot next month (besides Three Bridges, which must have amazing radio promoters to get where they are and could always turn in a repeat performance) are the Hoppers’ “He Erased it” at #2 and the Dove Brothers’ “I Can Pray” at #3. The Hoppers’ song moved three notches, up from #5 last month, while the Dove Brothers’ song moved a lot faster, from #14 to #3.

In this case, I’d like to see the Dove Brothers claim their first #1. In this case, it’s not just that I feel the Dove Brothers’ song is stronger; the Hoppers have spent twelve (non-consecutive) months holding the #1 spot on the Singing News chart with different songs, while the Dove Brothers have yet to see their first #1 hit.

Legacy Five’s “Strike Up the Band” and the Booth Brothers’ “Testify” both held even at their previous slots, #4 and #7 respectively.

Songs that made particularly noticeable gains include Brian Free & Assurance’s “It’s All About the Blood” (#11 to #6), the Perrys’ “He Forgot” (#34 to #15), the McKameys’ “You’re Still God” (#72 to #35), and two songs that I think could both (and ought to both) be headed for the #1 spot, Karen Peck and New River’s “Last Night” (entering the charts at #40) and the Mark Trammell Trio’s “Once Upon a Cross” (#73 to #42).

One bit of trivia, for those who care: Both the Dove Brothers and Stateline Quartet have songs on the radio right now called “I Can Pray.” I did a bit of research and found that they are two different songs; the Stateline Quartet’s is also a good song.